Know Your Worth: Information to help you negotiate the best possible salary.

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El Macho

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I have put together a website to let foreign teachers report their salaries for teaching English in China. The website has two main features:
1. A data table of how much foreign teachers earned, the hours they worked, and where in China they were working.
2. A survey to report your own past contracts.

All data is submitted anonymously and is displayed on the website under a Creative Commons license. Data will be made available for free download from the website.
The data table on the homepage only displays some of the submitted information; full details on each position can be found in the Job Reports section of the site.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about the site. I built it as a free and open resource for the Foreign Teacher community, and hope it can be useful to you.

If you find the site useful, it would be great if you tell other FTs about it – the more data we can collect, the more useful the site will become.
« Last Edit: March 10, 2011, 06:39:38 PM by El Macho »

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Raoul F. Duke

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Nice idea, O Macho one. Participation recommended. bfbfbfbfbf
However, this will probably get moved to the Links page...
"Vicodin and dumplings...it's a great combination!" (Anthony Bourdain, in Harbin)

"Here in China we aren't just teaching...
we're building the corrupt, incompetent, baijiu-swilling buttheads of tomorrow!" (Raoul F. Duke)

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Monkey King

You cant choose the metropolitan areas like Shanghai, Beijing in the where do you work section - it's a bit confusing even though there is a which city question also, because technically they don't belong to any province.

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El Macho

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Thanks for that; BJ, Chongqing, Shanghai, and Tianjin have been added to the Province drop-down. Am I missing any others?

As per another suggestion, there is now a field for Vacation Time; excluding Chinese holidays, how much time off did you get?

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Raoul F. Duke

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Shenzhen is also a "city-state" kinda like BJ or Shanghai...
"Vicodin and dumplings...it's a great combination!" (Anthony Bourdain, in Harbin)

"Here in China we aren't just teaching...
we're building the corrupt, incompetent, baijiu-swilling buttheads of tomorrow!" (Raoul F. Duke)

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El Macho

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Thanks for that, Shenzhen added!

I've sent some emails to try to get other traffic to the site…the more the merrier!

I threw in my 2 jioa's worth
For you to insult me, first I must value your opinion

really interesting reading! hope the site continues to grow agagagagag
两只老外, 两只老外,跑得快,跑得快,
一个是老酒鬼,一个是老色鬼,真奇怪, 真奇怪

I think that some of the salaries that are available in China belong to a completely different wage comparison website, one with an .ac domain.

I personally think that El Macho's website should be used to build a profile of wage expectations for your run-of-the-mill English job at a language school, training centre, state run school/university.  To merge the higher end figures with these would raise expectations of what one could realistically earn in China with only basic qualifications and experience.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2011, 02:19:22 PM by Slim Pickens »

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Monkey King

I dunno Slim - Shouldn't there be a full representation of what's on offer? 

In fact, it's possible to get into some of these better paid joint-venture type jobs with 'only' a CELTA and a few years experience - well within most people's grasp if they want to aim for it.

Besides, it's been possible for years for just about anyone to make 10,000+ a month teaching kindergarten, so I don't feel these wages are exactly astronomical anyway.

The university I work for is accredited in the USA.  Teachers teach specific courses in English.  ie Psychology, Physics, Chemistry, American History etc.  Teachers must have a minimum of a Master's Degree in the course they are teaching and must have their transcripts sent to the American University to be approved for teaching before they are hired. 

We have several teachers with a PhD and some just have their PhD dissertations left to do. Yes the pay is quite high but it is not the same as teaching ESL or oral English at some universities.
Be kind to dragons for thou are crunchy when roasted and taste good with brie.

In fact, it's possible to get into some of these better paid joint-venture type jobs with 'only' a CELTA and a few years experience - well within most people's grasp if they want to aim for it.

Actually, you raise an interesting point here, the one area that the wage comparison website does not cover is the discrepancy between job requirements (experience and qualifications) and what the employee says about themselves.  Yes, we know about the experience and qualifications of the person that has the job, but is this what the job advertisement asked for?


Besides, it's been possible for years for just about anyone to make 10,000+ a month teaching kindergarten, so I don't feel these wages are exactly astronomical anyway.

My original thoughts were not directed at those kind of jobs.  To use two websites as an example, the two job areas I had in mind were as different as the jobs available here: http://www.eslcafe.com/jobs/china/ and here: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobs/education-studies-tefl.

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jpd01

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I just hope that there is a screening of the information provided. I saw a couple on there that seem a bit crazy. One stating that their job is a public/Chinese university and they work 18 hours a week for over 20,000rmb a month??
IF it's a real job then some explanation should be required from the poster before being allowed on the site. Otherwise there is the possibility that people will just go on the site and overstate their wages and working conditions.
I put my part time and my fulltime job on there.
"I don't understand what I did wrong except live a life that everyone is jealous of." Charlie Sheen.

I think you just have to take the information for what it is. If there are entries that look way out of the ordinary compared to the average then you can probably assume that job is atypical.

The more info there is the better the data will be. If you see a whole slew of jobs in on city at the 5000RMBish a month and then one sticking out at 15,000RMB then you'd have to conclude that job was probably a special case. Still, it is good to know that those possibilities are out there, even in 2nd tier cities, for people with the right qualifications (or ability to market themselves).

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Rin

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So, what happened to the site? It's down.